Name: It's OK That You're Not OK
Rating: 4.3 (226 reviews)
Author: Megan Devine

What’s in it for me? A radical way to meaningfully live with grief.

“Everything happens for a reason. You’ll be OK again.”

Have you ever wanted to scream a relative’s head off for saying this only months after your spouse, parent, or child died? Has a friend murmured this when they saw you crying at the supermarket? You’re not crazy, and you are right to feel rage. It’s not you – it’s the society we live in. The way we collectively perceive grief is broken. We have been taught that pain from permanent loss is something to be corrected or overcome.

The thing is, grief can’t be contained by timestamps and milestones. It certainly isn’t an anomaly to move on from, but an experience to live with. Grief is a natural part of life that communities should acknowledge and support together. After all, when you love, you will inevitably face loss. And while it’s true that no one else can experience your grief for you, you don’t have to go through it alone. It’s time to see grief as a naturally painful experience to tend to rather than an uncomfortable problem to solve.

This Blink to Megan Devine’s It’s OK That You’re Not OK aims to redefine grief support. It explores the ways society has misunderstood grief, the differences between inevitable pain and unnecessary suffering, the steps to relieve symptoms of stress from grief, and the two-way path to living meaningfully with grief.

Accept that grief is a natural response to great loss.

If you’ve ever experienced permanent loss firsthand, you know that platitudes and advice don’t work. It doesn’t matter if good intentions are behind them. They can come across as incredibly dismissive and impersonal.

To properly rethink grief support, let’s first look at how society fails to acknowledge grievers the right way and instead tends to reduce great pain to Hallmark quotes.

First, many people believe that every single thing happens for a reason – but this isn’t true. A healthy person could be alive this morning, only to suddenly die at noon. We are also constantly told that death is a lesson for personal or spiritual growth. But telling a grieving mother that her child’s death is something to learn from implies that her parenting is up for correction. That’s probably not the meaning people would intend, but it’s likely the hurtful statement she will hear. Isn’t it unnecessary? The truth is, death just happens; you don’t have to experience it to be a better person.

Second, people can’t help starting a grief contest when they hear news of loss. Remember that time your coworker told you he lost someone, too, after you revealed the recent death in your family? While you know he meant to empathize with you, what he said could understandably grate on you. Why do well-meaning words tend to hurt or cause rage? It’s simple: no two losses are identical. All forms of loss are valid, but the degrees of pain and lasting life changes they cause are not the same. A breakup, while painful, isn’t the same as death – the same way that losing a job isn’t the same as losing a limb.

Third, our cultural and medical definitions of grief are completely at odds with the reality of grief for those who have experienced it. Consider the five-stage grief model outlined by experts Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler. We tend to believe that grievers experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance in a linear sequence. While this model sheds a lot of truth on grief-adjacent emotions, not everyone’s response to immense loss will neatly fit into this order. You might dive straight into depression immediately after the loss, or struggle with acceptance for the rest of your life – and either way is OK.

True support begins when we can comfortably call grief what it is: an experience to integrate and carry together, instead of a diagnosis to overcome alone.

Discover how to honor grief freely in the next section.

You can’t move on from grief, but you can create new meaning around it.

No matter what happens, the days, weeks, or months of early grief will eventually pass you by. At this point, you will enter the phase of later grief.

Society needs to learn that grief doesn’t always get better with time. You may feel that the second anniversary of your partner’s death is even worse than the first. You might miss your late parent more than ever as years go by. Don’t worry if you do. The fact is, we don’t move on from grief – only with it.

Final Summary

Rethinking grief support is challenging, but it can and must be done.

When the reality of grief takes center stage, we can collectively view it as an experience to tend to instead of a problem to solve. To handle grief with authenticity, we must embrace the fact that meaningful pathways can exist inside it. There’s no need to move on from it when it’s not an issue to begin with.

Kernaussagen in It's OK That You're Not OK